CHICAGO – As the rest of the college basketball world prepares for the start of the March Madness, fans at DePaul, the once great Midwest program that reached No. 1 status in 1981 under the late Ray Meyer, is living with the frustration that comes after the Blue Demons (11-20) suffered through another losing season and will be watching the NCAA tournament on TV for a 14tth straight season.
In the last 25 seasons, the Blue Demons have played in only two NCAA tournaments, in 2004 during Dave Leitao’s first of two stints as head coach and in 2000 under Pat Kennedy. Leitao, who left for the Virginia job in 2005, returned to try to resuscitate the stagnant Big East program three years ago
A group and students and alums have run out of patience, and the student newspaper has been chronicling the demise of the Blue Demons, are saying it’s time for a change at the top of the program and calling for the firing of athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto.
“Over the decades, you’ve seen this clear regression, and a lot of people blame Ponsetto for three hires, what people point at where she had failed spectacularly,’’ DePaul student newspaper sports editor Shane Rene told WGN-TV. ‘’If your flagship program is not performing as a billboard for the university, then that’s a problem.’’
Alums have taken out a full-page ad in Sunday’s Chicago Sun Times, blaming Ponsetto for overseeing 233 losses and 11 losing seasons since taking the job in 2002. A 2012 DePaul graduate Matt Martinez paid for the ad through a GoFundMe campaign.
The university has defended Ponsetto, insisting she has had success in other sports, like soccer, softball, tennis and women’s basketball and 14 of the 15 Blue Demons’ programs have represented the school in NCAA championships including 15 straight NCAA appearance by women’s basketball, two trips to the College World Series by the women’s softball team and trips to the NCAA tournament by the men’s and women’s soccer programs after winning Big East championships.
In 2016-17, DePaul led the Big East with six team championships and eight team academic awards and pointing out Ponsetto was instrumental in negotiations for the new Wintrust Arena, the new home of Blue Demon, basketball, which opened this year, leading fundraising efforts and securing naming rights for the sparkling new 10,378 seat facility near the South Loop.
But DePaul fans have not responded with any great enthusiasm for another losing product. DePaul’s average home attendance was just 6,025 and only 2,993 fans showed up for the Creighton game in February. The future also took a hit when four-star recruit Tyger Campbell, a point guard from LaLumiere, Ind. Academy, who had committed to DePaul in May-, decommitted in September and then flirted with the Blue Demons again, recently opted to play for UCLA instead.
